


New Skin

by tangerinewolf



Series: Vines [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Max Caulfield - Fandom, chloe price - Fandom, pricefield - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Postscript, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinewolf/pseuds/tangerinewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Chloe's death Max is destroyed; her best friend and her girlfriend, gone, and Arcadia Bay changed for the worse. Max is grieving and dealing with the loss of her powers, but now that she can't change time she has no idea what to expect. This is a postscript to the 'Sacrifice Chloe' game ending, and follows Max as she processes her losses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Skin

‘How unlike you Chloe’ thought Max. ‘How unlike you, to go somewhere I can’t find you.’  
She looked out on the bay, waves folding in on each other, birds swooping and falling. Everything as it should be. The sky soft and turning yellow, no storm clouds, no lightning.   
In the days following Chloe’s death, the victory was so hollow. Every familiar face in the street was a punch in the stomach. Oh hey Daniel, glad you’re ok, hey did you know I let the girl I loved more than anything die so you could keep drawing your pictures and being alive? No? Well you’re welcome.  
A sigh billowed out of Max, feeling so big it could fill the whole bay. The tears on her face were warm under the sunset, the breeze catching them every few seconds. It was a constant vacillation between feeling everything and feeling nothing at all. Telling her parents it was so kind of them to fly out, that she was so glad to see them, when inside a storm still raged on. Being held by Joyce, having her hair stroked by a woman sobbing so hard she was choking, and just feeling nothing.   
Looking out to sea, it was so easy to feel soaked up in the pointlessness of life after Chloe. What was the point of being around if you weren’t ever going to hear that dirty laugh, feel her arm round your shoulders as she pulled you into her orbit, hear her bracelets rattle in your ear, feel every word in the pit of your stomach? Max had only had Chloe again for a week but the loss was indescribable. Losing the girl she had grown up with, her childhood best friend, and the girl she had just fallen ass over elbow in love with, and they were the same fucking person.

***********

The previous night she had spent lying in Kate’s lap, crying and then apologising for crying, then crying again. Kate had been a good friend, taking Max for pots of tea in tiny tearooms and to artsy galleries to wander silently through the pictures. But Max couldn’t explain the loss she felt in its purest form. After all, to the world proper, Max and Chloe’s week of adventures and falling for each other had never even happened. It was one thing to lament Chloe as a friend, but to not be able to lament her as a lover was a painful insult to their memories.   
‘I’m so sorry Max. I’m so, so sorry.’ Kate said, over and over again. There was nothing else to say, only space to leave for Max to tell stories of pirate ships and snow globes and pancakes before she would break again. Sparklehorse played on the stereo on repeat, providing a curiously upbeat soundtrack to Max’s grief.  
‘Cool song Max, who’s it by?’ said quietly, to bring her back to reality briefly; A reaching gesture.  
‘Oh, some band. I heard it in a café or something. It’s nice.’ Max had said, gulping, her chest burning as Chloe spun diaphanous on her bed behind her eyes. She pulled herself up gently, wiping puffy eyes and sniffing. The sadness came in such powerful waves it felt like a natural disaster. The only thing she could do was to watch herself be carried along.   
‘Thanks for being there for me Kate. I can’t believe I’m crying all over you when I know you’ve been put through such shit lately. You’re a really good friend. I’m totally not worthy.’  
Kate smiled. Her grace was an immoveable force, something Max could fall into and never be let down by.   
‘We’re here for each other. It’s a real blessing to find someone to care about who cares about you.’  
‘You’re right. It’s good to have someone to talk to when bad stuff happens.’ Max smiled weakly, reminded that by letting Chloe go she had saved someone as good and worth saving as Kate. Kate was right about their friendship being a blessing. Even the darkest, most poisonous cloud had to have some tiny sliver of sliver.   
‘Have you talked to Warren much? He seems like someone who cares a lot about you. Plus he’s a really nice guy’  
‘Yeah, but it’s different and kind of harder to talk to him…’  
‘Because he’s completely crazy about you?’  
Max and Kate laughed, brightening the room.   
‘Oh my God, it sounds so conceited when you say it like that!’   
‘It’s true though Max, anyone could see it. You should see his face when somebody mentions your name, it’s like they’re talking about his favourite gory slasher movie times a million!’  
Max could feel a telltale reddening of her face. It was hard acknowledging a full-on unrequited love, especially when it was from a friend. Feeling every hug lingering a little bit too long, offers of movie trips and night-time drives, enough compliments to bolster the most fragile of egos. Teenage boys and their crushes; so all-consuming. Max was sure Warren would move on when he found another girl into the same dorky stuff as him, because that’s how it worked. At least, in her limited experience of boys, that was how Max was pretty sure it worked.  
‘I’m so sure Brook would be into going to the movies with him, he should ask her!’  
‘Max, he doesn’t have eyes for anyone but you right now. Maybe just let him down gently.’  
‘I guess.’  
They sat with their backs against the wall, looking out the window of the dormitory into the quiet night. The song continued to play as whoops and cheers issued from the gymnasium, signalling another otter victory.  
‘Go otters!’ said Kate, with only a little bit of sarcasm. Her hesitance towards Blackwell’s elite was understandable; their taunting had been a source of stress for a while. Still, in true Kate fashion she was resigned to turning her cheek and never lashing out.   
‘It’s so stupid.’ Max said suddenly.  
‘Huh?’  
‘I don’t know. I’m talking nonsense, just ignore me.’   
Max soaked in her thoughts a second. It was stupid. Everything was stupid. Football, swim teams, jocks, boys, girls, people, everything. The sentiment rattled through her head dampening her eyes again, more with frustration now than anything.   
‘I don’t really know what’s going on with you Max… I don’t think you’re telling me everything’ Kate murmured.  
‘But that’s ok.’

 

***********

 

What if you could love someone so much the universe changed the laws of time and space so you could be together for just a while longer? Max and Chloe were inextricably bound, twisted like vines throughout each other’s lives, each other’s hearts. If fate and destiny really were unchangeable, if Chloe was meant to die, then the only reason Max could have rewound and saved her was that something bigger than both of them pulled them together against all natural forces. Max and Chloe, together forever, reaching for each other through time, and even death. Going to places and times they could not find each other but loving each other unendingly.   
Max stood at the cliff side where they’d said goodbye. She gulped in Arcadia Bay air, hair rushing around her caught in a coastal breeze.   
‘All I have to do is go back. I have to focus. I did it before, all I have to do is go back’ she thought. ‘I can still change it.’  
Reaching her hand out, trying to feel the reels of time spooling and unspooling in her fingers like she did before, she concentrated, pushed the corners of her mind out until her head throbbed and she realised she wasn’t breathing. Nothing happened. The seconds stacked around Max in a terrible pile. Her grasp was gone; her power had slipped away. Drawing her hand back Max dropped to her knees on the cool grass. The breeze whispered around her as she cradled her knees and felt the rush of sadness push over her again. Chest pumping as hard as billows and eyes stinging again. There was nothing Max could do to bring her back. Gone where Max couldn't follow anymore.

In the air, a wobble. A blue-ish haze, like veils, shimmering and warping with the sun behind them. Fingers, an arm reaching out of the void, grasping, pushing. A presence so powerful and familiar and impossible.   
Unthinkingly reaching her hand out Max stretched towards the haze.  
‘…Chloe?  
'Max...'


End file.
